Here’s a good sad story that sticks in my mind when I eat this dish. When I was growing up I always wanted a pet rabbit. One lucky day, my grandmother finally bought a rabbit from a Vietnamese farmer’s market in our neighborhood, where a vendor sold live ducks, chickens, and rabbits. I held him, petted him, but didn’t quite think of the perfect name for my new pet. I decided to go out to play, and brought home a delicious curry that my grandmother had made… you guessed it. Nowadays, I just stick with chicken when it comes to this curry.
I prefer bone-in chicken for a dish like this so that it makes its own stock. That way, you get a lot of dripping sauce. For dipping breadBoth stew and curry which is my favorite way to eat. I like to tear the bread and dip it in the sauce. It’s not necessarily a special recipe, but I like to think that my grandmother used cattle in her recipes.
Unlike Thai curries, which are made from spice pastes, Vietnamese use a mixture of powdered curry. My family mostly used to go for pale madras curry. I buy the Pyramid brand, which is sold in Asian stores.